The Windstorm That Ended Provo’s Only Ironman

When Ironman officials came to look at Provo in the spring of 2001, someone asked about the water. The plan was to run the 2.4 mile swim leg in Utah Lake. Officials said the lake’s shallow depth did not concern them.

A year later it was the only thing anyone was talking about.

On the morning of June 8, 2002, a windstorm crossed the valley and hit the lake at fifty miles per hour. The field was already in the water. The Deseret News described what the wind did to the surface as ocean-like swells. Several athletes had to be pulled out. One of them did not survive.

Race officials cancelled the swim leg. The rest of the day went forward as a bike and run event. It was the first Ironman triathlon Provo had hosted, and it turned out to be the last.

A Lake That Builds Waves Fast

Utah Lake is wide, exposed, and shallow. It sits at roughly 4,500 feet on an open valley floor with very little to break the wind, and it averages only about nine feet deep.

The depth is the part people miss. In deep water, wind energy spreads downward and waves build long and rolling. In shallow water there is nowhere for that energy to go, so the same wind stacks the surface into short, steep, breaking chop, and it does it fast. A lake that looked flat at dawn can be unswimmable an hour later. That is not something unique to Utah Lake. It is what shallow water does anywhere. Utah Lake just happens to be one of the largest shallow lakes in the West, which means there is a lot of surface for the wind to work on.

The Part That Was Argued Over

The disagreement afterward was not about whether the wind was bad. It was about whether anyone should have been surprised by it.

State Senator Curt Bramble of Provo was on the water that morning and helped pull a swimmer out. He said Ironman officials had been negligent for starting the race at all, because high winds had been in the forecast for days beforehand. He called Utah Lake “a killer lake.”

Utah County Commissioner Gary Herbert saw it differently. He called the drowning an aberration and argued for keeping the event, which he estimated brought about three million dollars into the county across the week it ran. If the lake was the problem, he said, the swim could be held somewhere else. He suggested Deer Creek Reservoir.

What Happened to the Race

By that August, registration for the 2003 Utah Ironman had stopped. A Spokane newspaper reported that Coeur d’Alene, Idaho would take the regional race instead. Ironman’s communications director disputed the report and said nothing had been decided. Utah County held a year to year contract that ran through 2006 and wanted to renew it.

The race did not come back to Provo.

The Conditions Did Not Change

Twenty-four years on, what happened that morning is still ordinary weather for that lake. The wind still crosses the valley with nothing in its way. The water is still shallow enough to turn over in under an hour. Anyone who goes out there, in a boat or on a board or in a wetsuit, is working with the same margin the 2002 field had, and with forecasts that in this case were available days ahead.

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Source: https://www.deseret.com/2002/8/2/19669570/provo-s-first-ironman-may-have-been-its-last/